I am a total novice with Arduino as well. Since I had a couple of LEDs, switches and breadboards in my drawer, I've started withhout a kit - just with a plain Arduino UNO. (Actually I bought two of them - I was affraid that I will fry at least one of them. Did not happen sofar...) I bought elements, that I thought I will need for my future projects. I've set my expectations low, so I focused mainly on LEDs. A good set of wires with male/female sockets is very handy. Except from LEDs, I had a need for larger amount of resistors to drive the LEDs. A 220 Ohm SIL resistor(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sil_resistor.png) proved to be very practical with LED bars and breadboards.

You don't say why you're interested in Arduino but - assuming the purpose is to build some kind of programmable, semi-autonimous, potentially mobile device that can interact with its surroundings, with the minimum of hardware skills requirements - a complete alternative can be found in Lego, of all things.